


Para-Noir

by Fudgyokra



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (In chapter 2), Anal Sex, Angst, Cock Rings, Enemy Lovers, Erotica, First Time Bottoming, Hate Sex, Love Confessions, Love/Hate, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Romance, mmmmmmmmMMMM I accidentally wrote a chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-09 18:23:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11674602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fudgyokra/pseuds/Fudgyokra
Summary: He could smell blood in the water. Sniffed it out like a treat he wanted to devour, and this developed into him looking at Bruce like he just had to have a bite.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I like to call this one “Something I’ve Basically Written Before Only Slightly Different.” Sorry, y’all. Maybe one day I’ll produce good content.
> 
> While I Wrote:
> 
> Hatefuck - The Bravery  
> Rabbits Are Roadkill On Rt. 37 – AFI  
> Everything I’ve Known – Korn  
> Spookshow Baby – Rob Zombie  
> Ringfinger – Nine Inch Nails  
> Zombie – The Cranberries  
> Plastic Heart – Nostalghia*
> 
> And others.

_You look for me inside the dark_

_I am the ocean, you are the shark_

_You hunt me like your last goodbye_

_Oh, fallen angel of the night_

//

This enemy he’d made had the willpower of a beast, Bruce realized. Naturally, then, the wolfish behavior with which he began this violent dance should have been anticipated.

Suffice it to say that it was not.

It was so alarming both in speed and power that when Joker’s hand connected with Bruce’s throat, the latter did not have any clever way of squirming out of the grasp before he felt his head connect to the wall behind him. He couldn’t even put an arm up to cushion the blow.

Joker was shorter than him, and skinnier too, but the shock of the impact held him hostage for a moment too long, allowing his lips to part with a too-reverent breath that made the clown’s pupils shrink and widen again in interest. He could smell blood in the water. Sniffed it out like a treat he wanted to devour, and this developed into him looking at Bruce like he just had to have a bite.

Not one of them moved, and neither did anything around them. It was a still, cool night, free of goons or fires or casualties…as of yet. The only collateral damage at this point was the possible dent that Bruce’s head put in the wall, but something about that worried him more than destruction.

“I could just eat you up,” Joker said in a voice that some might have mistaken as sweet. His fingertips dug into the sides of Bruce’s neck in a way that relit the fire inside him.

“I think you’ll find I’m a little tough to chew,” Bruce quipped, wrapping a hand around Joker’s bony wrist like talons around a mouse. It should have granted him the upper hand, but he was suddenly apraxic—drowned in feeling, cursed with sensation, but unable to push it away.

It wasn’t a magic trick by any means, but Joker regarded it as though it were a miracle. “Do I sense a little bit of _willingness_ in the big, bad Bat?”

The thought terrified and enraged Bruce, but in the overlap between these two things there was something of a different persuasion lurking in the shadows. In the end, this was the Achilles’ heel that sent the Batman plunging into unknown depths, complete with sharp teeth suddenly and remorselessly bearing down on his bottom lip and a possessive hand sliding from his neck into the junction where his cowl met with his suit.

He wasn’t sure what hellish force held him back, but when Joker unlatched part of the mask, he let him. He watched as the man in front of him moved his hands around to the back, unhooking as they went, fingertips encountering heated skin instead of coarse Kevlar. Joker did not lift the cowl. Instead, he merely shoved it aside, leaving a sliver of exposed flesh large enough for him to sink his teeth into.

Bruce hissed and reflexively shoved the other off him, where he wheeled back and hit the ground with a high-pitched cackle. “Oh, and here I thought we were letting _me_ take the lead!” The way he said those words made Bruce grit his teeth, but it seemed nothing could make his frozen vocal chords work. “ _Yeah_ ,” the Joker breathed, raking his gaze upward from Bruce’s boots to his face, “that’s what I thought.”

Bruce looked up momentarily at the gray cityscape looming in the distance. Behind them was a warehouse, typically; he was beginning to think that Joker was planning these altercations around his favorite hiding spots specifically to be caught. Finally, he found his voice. “What do you want?” He figured he did not have to ask, because he knew very well what Joker wanted. That is, until he didn’t.

The thing about the Joker was that he was an ever-changing animal, whose mind today was a dial turned to a different setting than his usual innocuous flirtation. It was a change that Bruce did not find surprising. The question was never _if_ the Joker would finally act on his lewd remarks and semi-romantic ideations, but rather _when_ , and even though he had always known this, he stuck around. He neither hoped for this change nor dreaded it—it simply _was_ , as anything else between them just _was_.

So when Joker looked at him with a lascivious smile and hooded eyes and told him to get down on his knees, Bruce took it at face value and knelt to the other man’s level. Joker lashed out with one white-gloved hand and slipped one finger underneath Bruce’s chest piece. “You wanna know what I want?” he asked, churning words out slowly in a way Bruce hated. “I wanna be rewarded for my faith.”

Bruce bared his teeth at him, but did not pull away. “What do you mean?” he asked, planting one palm on the ground beside Joker’s thigh and using the other to catch the wandering hand.

“It’s not like I never asked god to send me an angel,” he told him, lifting his free hand to his mouth and taking the glove off with his teeth before tucking it delicately into the space between Bruce’s skin and armor. “Even if I didn’t expect one, I expected a hell of a lot better than a guy dressed as a bat.”

“I’m not here to be your savior,” Bruce muttered, taking Joker’s remaining gloved hand and sliding the cloth off.

“Then why _are_ you here, Batman?” It was a good question; one that Bruce asked himself a lot.

“I’m here,” he said after a thoughtful pause, “to wipe the smile off your face.”

“Impossible,” Joker all but whispered, tone seeping with victory and gluttonous want alike.

Bruce initiated the kiss this time, sparing Joker the plight of a bloody lip and putting forth his peace offering by gently sucking. It was an offer that Joker struck down in a heartbeat. Instead, he sank his nails into the muscle of Bruce’s thighs and scratched, looking at him with a fire in his impossibly green eyes. “I want the suit off. Show me the man beneath the vigilante.”

Almost grim in manner, Bruce began to undress. “You too,” he said, spoken like an order and taken obediently, as it were.

“Oh, _yes_ , sir,” Joker replied, lifting his shirt over his head and then reclining into the grass.

When Bruce’s hands came up to the remaining piece of his costume—the one shielding his identity from the world—he stopped short.

“There is a large difference between a naked body and a naked soul.” Joker spoke as if he were reciting poetry, but the moment their eyes met, his tone became something darker. “Don’t you think so, Mister Wayne?”

Bruce clenched his teeth. Thoughts derailed, he began with an accusation that did not get to flower. “How did you—”

“Do I really have to tell _you,_ of all people, that a magician never reveals his secrets?” Joker was taking a ludicrously sexual pleasure in the anger that Bruce radiated, and this only made him angrier. “I know the likes of a man with a life like yours, Batboy. So much money, so much power…it’s all so _boring_ , isn’t it?” He arched his back off the ground to shimmy his pants down, and Bruce yanked the cowl off in response before tossing it aside.

“What’s boring about being a socialite?” he asked, not to get an answer but merely to invoke a response.

Suddenly there were hands on his chest and a warm body in his lap with no barriers left to stop their skin from making contact, and when it did, Bruce was overtaken by something he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“Women throwing themselves at you, expensive drinks, fancy parties. All so dull, in my opinion. I mean, with a reputation like yours, you suck a dick or two and suddenly you’re not Gotham’s ‘most eligible bachelor’ anymore.”

Bruce narrowed his eyes. “I think you have too little faith in your city.”

“I think you have too little time to spend _not_ fucking me raw.”

“Anybody ever tell you that you have a filthy mouth?” Bruce muttered, dropping Joker onto his back again and pressing his palms to his thighs to keep them spread. This progressed into his fingers wandering across bleached flesh, mapping a path along his legs.

“You know, I think you might be surprised how many people have told me that,” Joker said pleasantly, watching with satisfaction as Bruce took the bait.

“You mean me, and me only.” Bruce flipped him over and forced his head into the dirt. “You’re mine.”

“Yours?” Joker asked, looking up through strands of his hair at the other. “Why, Brucie, I’m honored. When can I start planning the wedding?”

Bruce grabbed a fistful of Joker’s hair and lifted his head back up. With his throat exposed and his ability to muffle sound somewhat constricted, Bruce began pushing into him just to hear him choke out a swear: A single word dripping in a groan that was more satisfied than it had any right to be. At this point, it should hurt. Joker, though, always _was_ a sick bastard.

“We came sorely unprepared for this,” Bruce remarked, looking away to collect himself when Joker laughed gleefully.

“Preparing is for men like…well, like _you_!”

“It just seems like an awful idea,” Bruce lied. To him, it seemed rather befitting that the Joker was a glutton for punishment, even in this sense.

“Well, when I come to Wayne Manor to return the favor, I’ll be sure to bring all my goodies and toys,” Joker said, looking over his shoulder so that Bruce could see him roll his eyes. When he yanked on his hair again, the tone changed back into the lustful creature it was before. “Me, though…all I need is few inches from a billionaire every once in a while to get me through life just fine.”

Bruce hated himself for smirking, and even more for the thrill anticipating Joker’s arrival at his home gave him. “I can’t say I have the same fondness for pain.”

“Oh, baby,” Joker cooed, interrupting himself with a low chuckle, “if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be here right now, would you?”

There was a tingling sensation deep in his bones, something telling him that this was a problem for another time, just not _here_ and not _now._ Not with the clown arched out in front of him, hands planted on either side of his head, which was still obediently down in the dirt despite the fact Bruce’s grip on his hair was waning.

It took all of five seconds for him to notice and regain the upper hand, anyway.

Now Joker had him on his back, and suddenly all Bruce could focus on were sinewy muscles beneath pale thighs and the way they moved with slinking strength beneath the skin as the other man rocked back and forth, up and down, taking him in and out and back to a place of brainless pleasure he hadn’t been part of for so long that he wasn’t sure how long he could last.

His eyes were narrowed, focused on Joker, who stared right back with tense and heated interest. It felt like too much for Bruce to do anything but grip ferociously at the other man’s hips. Joker did not seem to mind the attention. If anything, that could have been his unraveling.

Bruce watched, detached from his mind and too plugged into his body, feeling more than seeing the way Joker rolled his hips forward in the last few moments, eyes rolling like dice, breaths shallow and hot.

“God,” Bruce groaned, forgetting for a moment where or even who he was.

“I wouldn’t go looking for him here,” Joker replied, half-breathlessly. “You would be disappointed in what you’d find.”

“I don’t think so,” Bruce said. It was the truth.

Joker’s mouth stretched into the shape of a laugh, and the sound of genuineness was something so foreign to Bruce that it struck him to the core, ripping the words right out of his mouth until all he could vocalize was the awful, rotten truth.

He didn’t hear himself past the edge of his orgasm, which whited out his vision in a way that made him frightfully dizzy. The moment after, Joker had cum across his chest with a moan he muffled behind his hand, and it wasn’t until both of them came back to reality that they realized, in tandem, the weight of the words that had been spoken.

In their jointed silence, Bruce tried hard not to watch as Joker pulled that hideous purple jacket close to him and slid it on, ignoring the rest of his clothes. Similarly, he would not look Bruce in the face when he spoke. “Thanks for the good time, Batcakes.” He said it like it should have been a joke, but his voice was oddly devoid of humor.

Bruce caught him by the wrist before he could stand. After a second of reconfiguring his thoughts, he finally made eye contact. “I’m not here to tell you lies, Joker.”

“Right, you’re here to wipe the smile off my face, if I recall correctly.” He gave him a tight-lipped smile, which was smudged to hell and back with what was left of his lipstick. “Congratulations.”

This, strangely, did not feel like victory.

“I meant it,” Bruce said after a long pause. He felt like he should have regretted it.

“Then say it again,” Joker demanded, daring him by bringing his face in closer.

Bruce could feel his breath fan against his lips and was momentarily enraptured by the feeling. The truth didn’t seem so hard or bizarre, right then. “I love you,” he said, repeating himself with a seriousness that had Joker’s lips curling downward.

“You’re joking.”

“I leave the joking part to you.”

One minute Joker was surveying him in honest disbelief, and the next he was crawling back into his lap, hands on either side of his face, dragging him into a kiss void of malice, void of the beastliness that had led them into this madness in the first place. It wasn’t how Bruce envisioned this meeting ending.

Somewhere inside him, he knew that this would only change _some_ things about their relationship. For now, though, he had this. Like any good saint, he ignored the past of the sinner hanging off his mouth until things could almost, _almost_ look perfect if he tried to picture them that way.

When they parted and went their separate ways that night, Bruce realized with a stabbing pain that this was the same old curse he always bore: Having the desire to somehow fix the Joker, only to remember afresh each time that there was no hope for success.

In the end, nothing had changed at all, had it?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Someone suggested I write a second chapter to this and I thought "hey, why not?"
> 
> While I Wrote:
> 
> Wicked Game – Stone Sour (Cover)  
> Crawling in the Dark - Hoobastank  
> Cold – Static-X  
> Undisclosed Desires – Muse  
> Haunted – Evanescence*  
> The Devil in I – Slipknot  
> Pussy Liquor – Rob Zombie  
> Fucked My Way Up To The Top – Lana Del Rey  
> All My Life – Foo Fighters
> 
> And others!

_Hunting you, I can smell you - alive_

_Your heart pounding in my head_

_Watching me, wanting me_

_I can feel you pull me down_

/

It had been weeks since they'd last seen each other. Bruce was beginning to get restless as his patrols of the city kept turning up with nothing but typical goons, night after night after night. Even today, he'd made the quiet trip back home stewing in a silence tenser than usual.

Alfred had told him, unnecessarily, that this level of pent-up stress was not healthy—that if possible, he needed to find a way to combat it. This wasn't news to Bruce, but the only thing he could think about was Joker and the heaviness of their last encounter, and exactly  _what_ he wanted to do to relieve the stress, even if it was against everything he'd ever stood for.

No matter how hard he thought about it, he could not pinpoint the moment it all went haywire. He didn't know when the watchful gazes became lustful, or when the careful surveillance became casual voyeurism, because every time he tried to think back to when it  _wasn't_ , nothing seemed to compute.

Bruce had told a maniac he loved him, which was a feeling that never suddenly dawned on him but rather rode through the years with him as if it had been there all along. He didn't want to admit to himself that it had been, because god knows that if  _he_  knew, then Joker could have seen it coming from a mile away and was now only using it against him. That was not a game the Batman wanted to play.

He had just locked himself into his bedroom for the last fleeting moments of night when he saw the object of his every waking thought, waiting in the shadows with a devilish smile on his pale face.

Instinctively, Bruce reached for his belt, only to recall that he'd abandoned the Batsuit in the cave several minutes ago, and was now standing before the Joker as merely a man.

"Joker," he growled, taking a step back where his brain begged him to move forward. He felt the desire like a horrible, pulling force. His snarl was not so much directed at Joker as it was at himself. "How the hell did you get in here?"

"Details, darling," Joker crooned, setting one foot forward and letting his body follow like liquid confidence. "They're so unimportant."

"Then  _why_ are you here?" Bruce narrowed his eyes. His muscles were still tight, held in defensive position, but beneath it all there was thatfeeling—the one that didn't want to fight.

Joker's drawn-on smile pulled downward. "To see you, Mister Wayne. Why else?"

"I don't like your tone," Bruce responded, carefully inspecting Joker's every move. Despite this, it seemed like the clown was standing right in front of him before he'd even taken his next breath, and it left him a little fuzzy, wondering why he'd let him get this close.

Joker laid a hand on the tensed muscle of Bruce's forearm. "I wanted to see how my  _favorite_  vigilante was doing."

One minute Bruce was swallowing a lump in his throat, and the next he found himself with his hands settled on bony hips, watching with a look he knew was defeated when Joker backed him up against the wall. Between his wandering hands and the serious expression he wore just before their lips met, Joker seemed dead-set on some kind of path, and Bruce realized with a start that he was going to have to grapple with his part in this. There was no coercion. There was no excuse. There was only the two of them breathing each other's breath as they stumbled with almost teenage clumsiness onto the bed.

Within seconds, Joker was undressing him. Bruce was tight-lipped in his silence, knowing damn well he shouldn't be allowing this, and worse, he should not  _want_  to allow this like he did. Joker could be playing him for a fool, and the confident way he'd strode into Bruce's home complimented the theory.

Would it be better or worse to allow this if he knew Joker was only playing with him? Bruce couldn't be sure; the question opened more doors than he would have liked.

This was crazy. Alfred was in the house, awake. The Batsuit was hidden away, leaving his identity exposed. Whether Joker knew it already or not, it did not make Bruce feel better. This all seemed cruelly natural, like Joker could have walked right in through the front door with a bouquet and chocolate and it still would have led them to this exact moment without any difference.

"Oh, Mister Wayne," Joker whispered against the shell of his ear. It made a cold shiver run through his blood, raising goosebumps on his skin soon thereafter. Cautiously, his eyes flickered to meet the ones above. "I brought something for you," Joker continued with a voice so sickly sweet that it could only mean trouble.

He straightened his back and reached into his pocket, placing his free hand on the stretch of skin below Bruce's belly button—palm open, fingers spread, as if holding him in place. The heat of skin-to-skin contact was adding fuel to the fire. Seconds later, the man brandished a plastic purple ring, complete with a victorious expression when Bruce huffed indignantly and began to sit up.

"As promised," Joker began lightly, working the hand that was on Bruce's stomach into his boxers, "I came with toys. Merry Christmas, Bats."

Joker's laugh was far too entertained. His smile was still sharp and his hand had begun working Bruce into a full erection so that it was becoming increasingly obvious he'd come with a plan. "I mean," he interjected, "Mister Wayne."

"You don't have to keep calling me that," Bruce grumbled.

"What you want me to call you?" Joker asked, eyeing him with a coy manner about him that they both knew he didn't possess. "Just Mister? Is that how you like it?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes in warning, but Joker was never a fan of stopping while he was ahead. "How about 'sir'? Yes, sir? I can do that."

"Joker," Bruce said, his voice a warning.

"You're not the 'master' type, are you?"

The words 'absolutely not' were left stranded, barely hanging off his lips when his mouth was captured again, less playful and more down-to-business than before.

"Just say the word," Joker said once he'd pulled away, "and I'll bow to your command." Like his previous thought, whatever Bruce was about to say had died on his tongue when Joker's cool fingers began maneuvering the plastic ring onto him. "Now," he continued, "that doesn't mean you're in charge this time. I did say I was going to return the favor."

Bruce realized all at once what that meant. "I don't think I agreed to that," he said, flat and unamused.

"All right," Joker said sweetly, crawling over him and staring him down with poisonous interest. "Do you agree now?"

Bruce didn't answer.

"That's what I thought, prettyboy."

"I think we found a winner for that nickname you were searching for." Bruce wasn't sure when his voice had becoming joking, but it seemed to startle more than just his own sensibilities.

"Aha," Joker said without humor, just before he sat up and began rubbing the back of his neck. "I thought we were leaving the jokes to yours truly."

Reeling at his last words, Bruce did not speak this time, either. Instead, he allowed Joker to lean in close—tongue flat against his jugular, nails down his chest—and closed his eyes.

Joker was neither slow nor purposeful; he seemed, instead, to be doing whatever pleased him at that exact moment in time. For now, he'd occupied himself by getting handsy, sliding warm palms across the expanse of Bruce's naked body, dutifully ignoring the spot he knew the other really craved those hands to be.

He'd yanked black boxers down around his length, and Bruce was only just beginning to feel the crawling sense of shame that came with being essentially nude underneath someone fully-clothed. It was amazing what a little rubbing in the right direction could do, though.

In this case, it was Joker tracing up and down his cock with one hand and using the other to retrieve a stashed bottle of what Bruce could only assume was lubricant. He wasn't privy to arguing with him when the strokes became whole-handed and the combined tightness and warmth suddenly escalated in a way that made him jerk his hips.

The last thing he needed was to become a melting puddle in his enemy's hands, but, as demonstrated in their last tryst, Joker could be a masterful, beastly manipulator when he wanted to be. Worse, Bruce enjoyed it.

"Tell me what you want," Joker cooed, still riding on his image of false sweetness and glinting fangs.

He was in Bruce's face now, his green eyes manic and glowing. He was unabashedly rutting against Bruce's thigh, waiting for him to drop a single hint.

Bruce wanted to more than anything, but he had to remember who he was. "Don't think so," he muttered through gritted teeth, arching his spine upward when a white hand disappeared beneath his body to prepare him.

This was new for him, not that he'd admit it, but, as with many things, Joker seemed to know. It was all in his expression: Delightedly breathless, expectedly possessive.

Neither of them seemed to remember the blur of time in between their last heated stare and when Joker was pressed up against him, hard and twitching and trying with vehemence not to indulge himself, as characteristically masochistic as ever.

This wasn't a stalemate. Joker had won this round, yet Bruce wouldn't give him the satisfaction of begging. "Either you're going to do it or you're not," he said, braced on forearms and glaring in the challenging way he knew Joker would always fall for.

"You don't know a damned thing about me," Joker trilled, running a finger along Bruce's jawline.

"I'm beginning to figure it out," he replied, half an admission and half a taunt.

"Maybe when I fuck the coherence out of you and into this nice little mattress…"

Bruce curled his lip. "I'd like to see you try."

"Not so threatening beneath the mask, cutie," Joker said, smudged red grin splitting his white face.

Bruce dug his nails into Joker's shoulder when the latter began to push into him, frighteningly gentle and slow. This was not the type of courtesy he'd been expecting, but as far as their relationship went, Joker was exemplifying the fact that he did know when to stop and when to play rough.

"Everybody has a first time," he said by way of explanation.

Bruce's eyes were blown and dark, fixated on the slow, deliberate movement of Joker's right hand tracing up his thigh. He'd only just blinked when fingers began flitting across his hipbone and back down to his cock, wrapping around it delicately as though he we afraid of hurting him. Bruce knew this to be untrue, but he wasn't ready to object just yet.

"I'm less breakable than you think I am," he said, despite the fact he was saying it through a tensed jaw.

"Yeah?" Joker breathed, rocking his hips into him like he'd been waiting for a green light.

"Hardly," Bruce answered, trying not to sound choked.

God, it was…different. It was strange and uncomfortable and weird, but…

Joker offered him a toothy grin, a tamer version of what he usually wore. "I don't think you deserve the kindness I'm extending you, but I  _do_  remember what you told me last time, and…" He paused, then gripped Bruce's forearms and began shallowly thrusting into him. "And I think you deserve a little worse."

As it turned out,  _worse_ meant painfully slow, with careful, calculated rutting and not too much touching—something that practically sent Bruce into a frenzy. "Relax, sweetheart," Joker said. He lashed out and gripped Bruce's chin with a ferocity that Bruce ached to unleash. "I wouldn't wanna  _hurt_  you, now, would I?"

It occurred to Bruce that he was not sure what he wanted anymore, besides the fact he wanted it  _now_. Whatever it was, it was something sinfully sweet and unpredictable that Joker proffered instead, taking over his body in a way Bruce had only done to others, not experienced himself.

Eventually Joker did decide he wanted to play nice, and he lowered himself onto his elbows so he could catch Bruce by the mouth again. When a hand came up to grab his hair, Joker returned the favor, breaking their kiss with a yank and a more forceful thrust of his hips.

The way Bruce looked up with teeth clenched, peering at him through one eye, must have been what finally set him off, because Joker's hands were back to fisting into the covers again, one on either side of Bruce's shoulders, and any sort of pace or rhythm was abandoned in favor of taking what he wanted, and fast.

By the end, Bruce's careful composure had melted into body-wracking muscle spasms and a strained jaw through which an embarrassingly guttural groan managed to escape. It floated perfectly clearly past Joker's ears, who treated himself to a finish with eyes screwed tight and bottom lip caught between lipstick-stained teeth.

Bruce, however, realized with a crashing wave of coldthat the ring was still on him tightly, denying him the same pleasure. He bared his teeth at the man above him, who was panting in the lewdest way he could conjure up, one finger perched carefully on his bottom lip to survey the damage.

"Only if you say please," he said with a dark cackle.

"Fuck you," Bruce breathed more than said, pinching his eyes closed just long enough to regain partial control of his brain.

"Oh, yes. Fuck me, indeed," Joker replied, curling a strand of his own hair around his finger. "But that's not what I'm waiting to hear."

Bruce cursed whatever god above there might have been, but the tight pain in his pelvis was harder to deal with than any kind of cut or scrape. "Joker," he offered, voice tight.

That did not have the desired effect. "Yes?" the man in question asked in mock-innocence, glowing in his own post-orgasm bliss and simply sitting with thighs tightened alluringly around Bruce's, hands ghosting through his own hair as he stretched toward the ceiling.

It was splendorous, the way he lounged on Bruce's body like he owned it, perfectly satisfied. Bruce wondered when (or if) he'd be able to find that kind of intimate comfort, then cringed privately at the thought.

"I'm looking for the magic word," Joker told him without need, bringing his hands back down and brushing fingers delicately across Bruce's strained erection. "One little word."

Bruce turned his head away, but Joker leaned up again and grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look into his eyes. "Say it," he demanded, harsh and low.

That did it. "Please," Bruce said, withering in shame and curling his toes in an effort to resist arching his back.

" _Oh,_ " Joker breathed, pressing his mouth against Bruce's jaw in a messy kiss, "how long I've waited for you to behave. Maybe one more time…"

" _Please_ ," Bruce grunted, lifting a hand to grab the back of Joker's neck.

"Who made you cum?" Joker asked, reaching his hand down around the ring and giving a preemptive tug.

"You did," Bruce answered, truthful and ashamed and hateful and  _loving_ it.

Joker pushed a hand hard into his hip and used his other to remove the ring. Within seconds, his mouth was around Bruce's length, hot and wet and everything he could have possibly wanted in this moment of desperation.

Bruce cursed as he came, reveling in the blinding force he had never felt before.

The other man had pulled back just fast enough for his face to be made a complete mess of, dripping with strands of Bruce's cum like a pornographic model. With his mouth pulled into a leering smile, he looked back at him as he panted hotly into the suddenly too-cold air of the bedroom.

That was the end of it.

Joker had extricated himself from the messy situation to clean up in the bathroom, and this left Bruce alone on his mattress, waiting penitently for a deep-seated regret that never came. What came instead was a being who returned looking far more ethereal than Bruce had remembered, and it took him a moment to realize why.

Joker was pale all over, even more so with his hair a mess of gentle waves around his angular face and his lipstick wiped off to reveal clean, pale lips that were bitten and bruised. He was completely naked now despite not having been earlier, seemingly at home in the manor enough to arrive without embarrassment in this state.

"Say, Wayne, don't suppose your butler would pitch a fit if I stayed a little longer, do you?"

Bruce's mind short-circuited. His throat was dry and his lips were chapped, so for the moment all he could think was to mumble a vague, "I don't care," before he disappeared into the bathroom himself to recollect in private.

The longer he spent in his self-inflicted perdition, the stranger he felt. Joker was out there acting as though he'd just won the lottery, and Bruce suspected it was because he'd finally gotten the Batman right where he wanted him, begging for release in what must have been some parallel to begging for mercy. Bruce was sure Joker wouldn't stop there, but what did he say after what they'd just done?

He took a deep breath and willed himself out the door.

Joker was sitting on his bed with his legs crossed, reclined against a propped-up pillow and reading the book on hydroponics that Bruce kept on his bedside table for when he wanted to look busy. He was struck again by the  _normalcy_ of this scene, and then tried to convince himself that it was all a ploy.

He leveled a stare at the other. "Why are you still here?"

Joker furrowed his brows and lowered the book he held. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't aware this came with restrictions."

"It's your game, not mine. I didn't make the rules," Bruce replied hotly, watching as Joker snapped the book closed and straightened.

"Neither did  _I_ ," he insisted with a scoff, pressing a hand to his own chest.

Bruce did not take the words lightly. "You didn't?" he asked, unconvinced.

"What—" the other laughed once in a way Bruce was loath to call uncomfortable. "What do you think I'm here for?"

There was no answer.

Joker seemed, for once, hesitant to snatch up the silent space. "You're the one that dropped the L-word, prettyboy. I'm just doing the only thing I can with that."

The honesty in his voice hit Bruce hard in the gut, leaving him with a feeling too sharp for him to touch but too electric for him to ignore. "What do you mean?"

Those eyes narrowed into slits, and for a moment Joker did not speak. Then, once a proper idea seemed to hit him, he grinned, making everything seem to fall back into place again. Bruce could have sighed in relief, but restrained himself. "Well, Brucie," Joker said, crawling toward him on hands and knees, "you're a bigger creep than I am if you think you can just drop a bomb like that and then have everything go back to normal. Or, well—" he paused to reconsider his words, "normal for  _us_."

With a twisting sensation in his gut, Bruce realized Joker was serious.

He'd confessed to a madman that he loved him, and what he'd gotten back was far more earnestness than he'd anticipated getting. Reciprocity from the clown seemed too far-fetched, but he wasn't going to push it. They'd done it like this for so long that he couldn't say he minded a change of pace.

"Not everything changes," he said after a long silence. Choosing his words carefully seemed unnaturally difficult, just then. "You're going to do the things you always do, and—"

"And the Bat finds me and beats me to a pulp." Joker rose to his knees and wound his thin arms around Bruce's neck. They were beginning to feel at home there. "I couldn't imagine it any other way."

"I suppose not," Bruce said, softer than he'd meant to.

Their lips were a hair's width apart, but Joker seemed content to keep the distance. "Underneath all the _loathing_ and such, I knew you felt the same way I did."

This made a lump form in Bruce's throat.  _The same_.

"Don't look too much into it," he mumbled, leaning in to close the gap between their lips.

"Me?" Joker feigned shock seconds before winding his fingers in Bruce's hair and leaning their foreheads together. " _Never_."


End file.
